Spinning Doris & The House That Dwells In Me

“SPINNING DORIS”

(“Hilando a Doris”)

by Hilanda A.K.A. Tania López Winkler

Hilandais aSpatial Private Detective. She looks forcluesembedded in the fleeting aesthetic experiences of city
life. Hilanda’s work involves strolling about and getting lost in the city’s maze and dreamscapes. If she was
in Paris she would be aflaneuse, but since she operates in London she is a detective. When in rapture and delirium instead of playing the violin she
spins filaments and threads.

Often, at night, Hilanda spins the
city’s fabric along with dreams into clues. These clues often unravel, detect or trace back the outlines of personal stories and
culprits.

Hilandamoved to asuburban1930’s house in London. Little by little she began to take
possession of the space stripping out any trace of previous inhabitation: out went the carpet, fitted furniture and wallpaper in each room. In doing this, she began to spin the threads of previous
owners. So far she knew an old couple had lived int he house for 40 years. In the attic she found among the rubble a knitting machine, and closed by there was a collection pages of patterns cut from
old magazines in an package. Among these magazine pages there was a newspaper wedding announcement for Doris and John, married in 1946. Hilanda took this material and began spinning
Doris.

The patterns showed a pattern themselves in the way the instructions were organised by categories: materials,
measurements, tension, abbreviations, back, front, sleeve, bands (waist, neck, buttons, etc.), and MAKE. From the patterns each category was taken and reconfigured into 9 lines. Each line ends with
a“constructed model” collaged from the different sweater models knitted by
Doris.

“Spinning Doris” is a homage to the fabric and structure of the quotidian. It manifests the social space that the act of knit and dress produce.

“THE HOUSE THAT DWELLS IN ME”

(“La Casa que Habita en Mi”)by Hilanda A.K.A. Tania López Winkler

As part of her enquiries on “the normal”, Hilanda revisits the structure of the quotidian in Modern Life. “The House that Dwells in Me”
takes the subject of housing to do so. Living in the city has become part of the normality to a majority of population. As a result, housing is a pressing issue and the shortage of land to build new
dwellings to find the delicate balance in the distance between work and private lives. In cities like London the common practice is to buy a suburb house previously owned by ‘others’ and adapt,
refurnish, extend, etc. it according to the current dweller. The house in its materiality, is rarely a first iteration of a home.

Hilanda recovered previous iterations of ‘normalities’ with materials and found objects as the house was
refurnished. Iron nails, wooden skirting, wall paper, old magazines found in the attic and shed, etc., are the materials Hilanda used to thread the narrative of Doris and John, the previous owners.
Taken from the house, each piece becomes a clue to the previous dwellers and their iterations. And Hilanda realises with each clue that more than inhabiting her house is the house that dwells in
her.